What a very strange winter we’ve had around here. January felt like spring with hardly any snow to speak of, and then March came blustering in leaving the ground more snow covered in the first week of its arrival than we had nearly all winter long.
We wondered what this very unusual winter would do to the maple syrup season. Seems like no one really knows. Probably because no one can remember a winter quite like this one.
My husband has been out of town for almost 3 weeks now, but before he left, he got the tree taps in place. This morning, I finally had enough time to check the sap buckets. Knowing that the sap would be flowing for a while before I could get to it, we used 5 gallon buckets instead of our usual 1 gallon jugs to collect the “tree juice”.
Before it was in sight, the sound of the creek trickling briskly met me. 
And evidence of deer walking by the farthest part of our front yard made me once again grateful for our little home on an out-of-the-way road.
I checked the buckets that were farthest from the house and they were nearly full! 
So they were poured into my collection bucket, which was then placed on a sled that simply hasn’t received enough use this year, and I was able to pull it up to the house very easily.
I was able to get nearly 10 gallons of sap from 4 trees this morning! Still have more trees to check, and I have some serious boiling off to catch up with, but now that the process is going, my house is taking on the faint sweet scent of maple syrup.
Hello, end of winter! So nice to see you.